Well, Do You, Do You Wanna
by Fandork
Summary: Junior Prom tickets go on sale, and Tavros' life is going to change...If he can stop freaking out for long enough and learn to buck up, anyway. Tavros Nitram/Dave Strider.
1. Two Tickets to Promadise

Tavros pulls his teeth back from his bottom lip when it begins to sting, glancing away from the clock on the wall. The teacher is finishing up, but she'll probably milk the time left of class for all it's worth. He follows the progress of the second hand as it comes full circle, only now allowing himself to drum his fingertips on his knee.

"Testing," The emphasized twang of Dave Strider's voice cuts in, the sound kicking back a bit through the speaker. Everyone hushes.

He smoothes on through.

"Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen, and Karkat Vantas."

Tavros hears a scandalized squawk from somewhere near the back of the room, followed by the crackle over the loudspeaker that means that Dave is being scolded by one of the school's secretaries.

"As I'm sure many of you amorous youngsters are aware, junior Prom tickets go on sale at the school store directly after the bell tolls at the end of the day. Better get on over quick, 'cause they'll sell out fast. And you don't want to see your sweetheart on someone else's arm if you don't fork over the dough in time. Make checks payable to The Prosperity/Derseville School District and please remember to form an orderly line so's we don't have a repeat of last year's Homecoming riot. All right, keep cool and do your schoolwork, kids. Strider out."

In one big rush, the entire class finishes putting away their things and zipping up their bags, sealing up the vacuum of noise immediately after Dave is done and the bell rings. The teacher calls out after them to answer the questions at the end of the chapter they're reading.

Tavros doesn't hang back like he usually does, and instead wheels himself straight out from behind his desk and out the door into the hall. He'll be braving a larger crowd this way, but he's too anxious to wait this one out. Mostly, people leave enough space for him to get by anyway when they see him coming.

He's planned ahead and he doesn't need to make a stop by his locker, even though it's on the way. This just needs to get done. He can't really let himself fall out of the confidence he has spent days working himself up to. It cost a lot of self-instilled pep talks in front of his closet mirror, and he doesn't want to run the risk of someone walking in on that again.

When he turns into the next hallway, he breathes out long and slow, looking ahead. He notices Karkat has gotten past him at some point and is shouldering off his bag as he walks into the room. Tavros steels himself and follows him.

"Hello, Tavros," Aradia says, smiling brightly, close-mouthed, when she catches sight of him from behind the counter. She passes off some papers to Karkat and sits up to walk around him towards the doorway.

"Hey, Aradia. Hi, Karkat," He responds.

Karkat makes some sort of non-committal grunt in the back of his throat, focusing on his papers, eyes cast down and brow knit like usual.

"Have the tickets gone on sale yet?" He asks, not quite sure who to direct the question to.

"Just did," Aradia answers, putting a hand up against the frame of the door. "Well, I'm off. Good luck today, Karkat,"

Another grunt.

"Have a nice day, Tavros. I'll see you tomorrow," She says as she leaves.

"Bye," Tavros says. There are other students beginning to appear behind him, so he pulls up tighter to the counter. "Uh, two, please. That's seventy, right?" He already has the check filled out. His parents knew the date was coming up and handed it over to him without much comment.

He'd earned the money by working and doing extra chores around the house for the last few months. It hadn't been necessarily meant to go towards Prom, but he wanted to pay for these himself.

"Sure, yeah. Give me a second," Karkat mumbles as he pulls out a neat stack of tickets and unwinds the elastic from around them. Karkat has practically made all the after-school activities in the school run this year. It's not technically his job; he's the junior Class president and doesn't really have many duties or much authority-but he claims the senior who is supposed to be doing these things is an incompetent fuckwit who would shaft the entire operation if he even wanted to handle it instead of foisting off all responsibility on someone else while he gets blown by some dumb bobble-headed bitch in the stall of the boy's bathroom like an especially retarded, overly-inbred bonobo.

Exact words. Tavros has been present for that particular rant on more than one occasion.

He's taken well to the task, at any rate.

"All right, here you go, enjoy," Karkat says, sounding less than enthused as he passes two tickets over.

"Thanks," He lingers for a moment, wary of the growing crowd behind him. "Are you going to the dance?"

"Yeah, whatever. I guess. Nothing fucking better to do. And I planned this shit, so I might as well see it out until the bitter end."

Tavros stifles his nervous laugh when it's still in his chest. It comes out sounding like a cough.

"Cool. I know Gamzee's going, and Nepeta and Equius are decorating, so I guess they, um, I guess they probably will too? Well, see you," He waves and pushes himself back.

"Bye," Karkat mutters after him, and then, "Thirty-five dollars. No, there isn't a deal for buying multiple. This isn't a goddamn charity raffle, what does it look like, you moron, Jesus Christ."

He huffs a laugh, because Karkat can't hear him as he wheels into the crowd, especially when his attention has turned elsewhere. When Karkat focuses on something, he doesn't have much left over for anything else.

But now he's got the tickets in his lap and he's going to put off having his freak-out for as long as possible. Even if it's inevitable.

Oh, god, now he's thinking about it. How is he going to do this?

It's not like no one else wants to ask Dave Strider to go to Prom. He's totally cool. Undeniably. And he has to work up the nerve—where he doesn't have much nerve in the first place—to ask this guy out _romantically_.

Dave is gay; he's told him that himself, nonchalant and matter-of-fact, when they were messing around with the schools mixing system together one time last year. They're friends (and that was a hard enough thing to get up to, it took weeks of encouragement from Gamzee) and they share a group of people between them. A group of hormonal teenagers who date in and outside of each other, messy, and tangled, and constant. It's a thing. It happens. Of course they're going to talk about it.

But he knows that doesn't make his chances that much better. He's seen the guys that Dave checks out; Tavros isn't exactly in the same league.

His anxiety haunts him as he leaves school (his parents have picked him up ever since kids started calling him "Short-Bus" in middle school) and it kinda just stays there looming over his shoulder for the rest of the night-during dinner, when he does his homework, brushing his teeth. He puts the tickets in the drawer of his bedside table for safe-keeping before he goes to sleep.

* * *

><p>AN: Title paraphrased from the song "Do You Want To" by Franz Ferdinand.

I love Feferi. I love Eridan. I do. But they're not in this story because they have better things to do right now.

...I promise I'll write an accompanying piece that focuses on them sometime.

I am the lamest. It is me.

Other relationships included are (in case anyone is sensitive to these things:)

John/Vriska, Sollux/Feferi, Sollux/Karkat, Rose/Kanaya, Aradia/Equius


	2. Bro, You've got a Friend in Me

Tavros hits his first roadblock.

* * *

><p>"The idea of all those promise rings that'll be dropped into the toilet at the motel after Prom—all those innocent, young things giving up their precious maidenly virtue to the baseball team's defensive lineman—it offends my delicate sensibilities. It makes me weep at my very core. I just can't bring myself to be witness to such things," Dave says, hand to his chest and gaze fixed on the ceiling.<p>

"What the honest fuck," Karkat gapes, ignoring Terezi's delighted cackling. "You are the worst, most insincere bastard I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. I should be nominated for sainthood just for standing here listening to you." He pauses. "And there are no defensive lineman in baseball, you colossal idiot."

The corner of Dave's mouth twitches up.

Terezi is bent at the middle and gripping her knees with the sharp points of her fingers, dwindling down into conspiring giggles. She collects herself and leans into Karkat, whose frown deepens.

"You sure I shouldn't rent an extra zoot suit and cane for you, Mr. Coolkid?"

"Although that's tres ironic, milady-and I congratulate you for that, truly impressive-I could never pull it off quite like you. I just don't cut quite the same figure. You'll have to do without my charms for one night this time around."

Tavros, stopped just short of the corner to listen, echoes his plummeting heart by sinking further into his chair.

"Ugh," Karkat sneers, "Why do I even bother trying to be civil? It's wasted on you all."

Terezi punches him a little too hard, luckily missing her target enough to just glance off of him. "Calm down, Karkles. Dave is just a party pooper. It's gonna be so much fun, just you wait and see," She waves at Dave, and ushers Karkat (grumbling) away by his shoulder.

As she goes, she lifts her head and seems to notice Tavros, quirking a grin at him.

Sure, she may be blind, but she doesn't miss a thing. Sometimes it's a little frightening.

Tavros ducks out and away as quickly as he possibly can. He feels totally deflated.

So Dave doesn't seem to be interested in going to the dance. Now he vaguely remembers John and Jade having to goad him into attending Homecoming this past fall. And as it comes back, he even recalls him sitting around for most of it, bored, doodling on napkins. It could be that the music the usual DJ plays is too mainstream, or something. Dave is pretty…_vocal_ about his eclectic tastes. Tavros knows at least that much.

Heaving a great sigh, he slides his hands along the tires of his wheelchair and moves down the hall. He presses his palm to the oversized button that mechanically opens the door into the boy's bathroom, a little less delicately that he normally would.

"Hey, what's up, Tav-bro?" Gamzee greets him, bent over the sink and turning his head towards the door. His face drips slow, thick streaks of greasepaint and water, dabbling color onto his shirt.

"Uh, hey, Gamzee," He pulls a sheet out of the paper towel dispenser and holds it up to him. "Did you get into, trouble, again?" He gestures to his own face, finger tracing a full circle against the air.

"Ain't no big deal, Tav. Miss White just got some complaints again, that's all it is." He presses the paper towel to his face and smears a layer of the paint from his face. "Ha. Look," He holds it up, presenting the vague face-shape he has left behind.

Tavros smiles a little awkwardly.

Miss White is the advisor to the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and one of the few adult-figures that Gamzee has ever cottoned onto. The school isn't too harsh on him for his slight eccentricities, like the face-paint, mostly because they believe him to be a little autistic (but also because he's sweet-tempered and despite his appearance, harmless.) The teachers and staff here used to scold him off and on, but by now, near the end of their junior year, they usually let things slide.

The school has never actually tested him and he doesn't have the type of parents who take the time to push such things, so he's mostly left to his own devices when it comes to his education. But he's still handled delicately, because they're worried about the possible hurt that punishment could cause to a kid who they see as a little slow—which, granted, he may be. Since no one ever tried very hard, Gamzee has never learned how to form attachments to adults.

Miss White was different with him. She's _used_ to different. She got him to join the club and Tavros has seen Gamzee settle into himself there.

Karkat warned that he wouldn't last long in the GSA when, by the end of freshman year, Gamzee had already dated two girls in the club. "He's gonna end up fucking all of them and then it'll all end in tears. Someone needs to stop him; I know I'll end up having to clean up the whole awkward, tense, sloppy feelings mess. You know I will. It's like I can't stop myself. Oh, god, someone else deal with this miserable freak for once, why me, the end is nigh," He'd said. (Well, it'd been something like that; he'd gone on for a while. He has to admit, Karkat is kind of a drama queen.)

But Gamzee did date through the whole group, all eight of the ten of them who were interested in his gender, and they couldn't love him any more than they do. It's almost like he's their mascot. It's apparently difficult to dislike him once you get to know him.

Gamzee has finished removing the last of the color from his face and he looks a little curiously at Tavros. "Is everything alright with you, little buddy?"

Caught, Tavros shakes his head slightly, clearing his thoughts. "Oh, I'm fine, just thinking. It's nothing," He assures.

Gamzee tips himself so that his back is pressed to the sink, frown twisting skeptically. "Don't give me that, Tav, I know when a brother is all up and upset about something. Now tell me what's nibbling at your brain."

"Heh, can't get anything past you, huh?" He leans back against his chair, eyes glancing off to the side. "Well, I was thinking of, I guess, taking someone to Prom? And, I don't know if, maybe, that was a bad idea after all. Actually, yeah, it was probably a bad idea. I'll just go with everyone as a group this time. I think."

Gamzee tilts his head with a grin. A pearl of water that was caught in a curl of his hair falls on his shoulder. "Nah, bro, if you got the feeling, you should just go with it. But that's amazing. You've finally got your eye set on someone. I'm sure they'll be so excited to get to go with you."

"Thanks, Gamzee," He says, although he's not as sure.

But Gamzee is really great to talk to, so he follows him outside and because they both have the afternoon free, they end up going home together. He's not comfortable enough yet to discuss his exact situation, but Gamzee isn't the type to press him.

Which is a really lucky thing.

And, of course, Gamzee will be the first person he goes to when he is ready to talk to someone.

If only Dave was so easy to approach.

* * *

><p>AN: This is such a mess.

I'm still basically in a baby-stage when it comes to writing, so please forgive me and stick around.


End file.
